


supermassive black hole

by nimrodcracker



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Mage Rights, Trauma, covers the entire of origins, i don't like the circle and the chantry and neither does my warden, stream of consciousness (kinda?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 03:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: she is caustic words and unbridled contempt but surana falls for her anyway.





	supermassive black hole

**Author's Note:**

> trying out something new with this, bear with me. and yes, i'm back - but material i'm posting now isn't new, just... stuff i've written since last year but never got around to publishing :')

they say the circle keeps her kind safe, but the circle is where her kind learn to survive.

surana's earliest moments are of fear and books and the sharp tang of burnt lyrium, but creators, she swears there is a life before that. of dirt under her feet, the bustle of a market, and the tantalising freedom to walk wherever she pleased.

not this sensation of being stalked by shadows of steel, always watching, ever-watching...

the apprentices say he's cullen. a sweet, cute thing that's different from the other templars.

she says he's no different a threat.

* * *

amell doesn't impress surana, being a _shem_ like the rest of them and coming from stuffy human nobility - or so she says - but she sees _her_ before she sees the pointy ears and that's all surana's ever wanted.

surana invites her to their table, the corner of the library that she and jowan have claimed as their own.

amell declines with a smile, but she shows her face around surana more often. surana thinks to herself, _good enough_. for a _shemlen_ , amell lacks their unspoken disgust toward elvhen. her kind.

it's always nice to know another _shem_ surana doesn't have to watch out for.

* * *

surana utters thanks to the maker when surrounded by burnished steel and the harsh light of day, but when silence drapes around her like a shroud in the safety of nightfall, she fingers the peppered edges of a tome the library won't miss on her lap, the stories of _elvhenan_ colouring its pages.

she's long found the canticles purged from _their_ tome of chants, but that's not when she lost faith in their maker.

surana's never thought herself as religious (how can she, as a _mage_?) but how can she believe in a religion that doesn't believe in her?

* * *

eventually, amell sticks around. sometimes for hours on end, even if it's just for simple companionship and not heated debates about magical theory.

surana finds herself enjoying either.

* * *

jowan is the epitome of naivety and weakness surana abhors, but she's there when he shatters his phylactery. she's there standing up to the fury of greagoir with him at her back, her staff between her neck and the sharpened edge of the knight-commander's blade.

surana spits the trauma of her life imprisoned in a gilded cage under the ever-present gaze of the templars, all the while cognisant that every word yelled is another letter added to the writ calling for her rite of tranquility. but jowan isn't someone who's ever remarked on the pointiness of her ears, nor the reflectiveness of her eyes. jowan isn't someone who stalks her in the halls under the guise of adolescent infatuation.

jowan's a fool, but he isn't an enemy.

* * *

amell doesn't impress surana, being of noble and human blood for starters. at first. eventually, she wa- _is_ a dear friend, until she vanished in the dead of night and was never seen in the tower again. not even among the tranquil - but that was the day before surana was conscripted.

surana thinks of the fiery redhead as she packs her things, after jowan's bloody escape - the _liar_ \- and duncan's sly move. the apprentice quarters are deserted during dinner, but the fade is ever-whispering; despite the chantry's catastrophising, it's a comfort. ironic, how spirits don't see her as an abomination. fade spirits don't terrorise her like how _shemlen_ do. spirits, whom the shems have derided as avatars of carnage and catastrophe.

surana stops by amell's bunk before she leaves, hoping to quell the inexplicable disquiet in her chest. something tells her amell doesn't do disappearing; the redhead isn't empty in the head enough to act suspicious, given the attention the templars lavish on her. (still her mess, anyway, given the stunts amell pulls in the name of scientific curiosity. surana is certain irving's support is the only thing standing between amell and a brand on her forehead).

the bed is bare. made-over. as if it was never slept in before.

surana's breath catches - but only for an instant. when she heads back to the main hall, duncan awaits her; her link to a life beyond the circle's walls. of dirt under her feet, the hustle of a market, and the tantalising freedom to walk wherever she pleased.

just... without the one _shem_ she didn't mind spending it with.

* * *

before she's a chance to rest, duncan sends them all into the wilds in search of darkspawn blood - but it's not those abominations that set surana's teeth on edge. instead, it's her fellow recruits.

jory reminds her of well-meaning, yet ignorant _shems_ who paint themselves as fools the more the speak about elves. daveth isn't stuck-up nor hard-assed, but he's flightier than a Templar around blood mages. alistair... his jokes make her gnash her teeth in frustration.

if not for alistair, surana would've left daveth and jory both in the marsh. so she spends the whole time boiling darkspawn blood till they melt from inside out, just to stave off the boredom and find excuses not to converse with them. she has to wipe the blood off her staff, after all.

everything changes once a raven-haired witch steps out from the bushes.

* * *

she is caustic words and unbridled contempt, but she intrigues surana anyway. the way she stalks, the way she speaks, and how her amber eyes reflect the setting sun as she leads them deeper into the wilds.

there is great magic in the place that flemeth and morrigan call home; tingling, pricking heat that's forgettable if surana focuses on _not_ thinking about it.

surana knows that there are things left unsaid as they're escorted out of the wilds. knows that it's folly, catching herself dwelling on the lilting cadence of the witch in her ears.

* * *

_they're after me,_ amell's note reads. _i found out something i wasn't supposed to about irving and blood magic in this tower and now the templars think i'm one. if you don't see me again, this is a goodbye._

surana finds the note in her pack when she's waiting out the minutes before the joining inside her tent. ostagar's chill is unforgiving, and surana allows herself the luxury of conjured flames in a jar she keeps by her bare feet. how had amell slipped the note into her pack? _when_ had she done it?

surana presses her fingertips into paper; thinking to stress upon its surface her stress, trying to tamp down the worry balling in her throat.

amell has a flair for the dramatic, clearly, but that isn't the same as being dishonest. truth be told, who lies about this?

in the sombre moments walking towards the roaring flames of duncan's campfire, surana vows to search for her friend after the worst of the horde passes.

a friend who did right by her, when little else did.

* * *

it's never as simple as it seems.

surana wakes in a foreign bed under a foreign roof and what stops her from fleeing with spirit energy warming her palms is the familiar drawl of a witch.

pain lances through her as she wills her suddenly stiff limbs to move. so much has happened in the span of hours; her brain hurts from the deluge of emotions and memories slamming into her the more conscious she gets.

"you're awake," is what morrigan says as she steps into view. surana thrashes about, not quite registering those words, so the witch grips a hand and stares right at her.

"stop that," morrigan says, forcefully this time. "you are safe."

in her mind, surana rejects it. safe stopped existing for her the moment the blight touched her lips. safe remained a fantasy the moment she understood what being an elf _and_ a mage in the circle meant. but some irrational part of her believes in it a moment too long, lingers on the sight of morrigan looming over her, and that siphons the anxiety from her system.

as morrigan checks her again with the grace of an unpracticed healer, surana begins to wonder.

* * *

she is caustic words and unbridled contempt but surana falls for her anyway.

that night before they reach lothering, surana spends her last minutes awake around her campfire. alistair sulks at being left alone - but morrigan's glare sends him swiftly walking away with a scowl.

so they talk. they talk until alistair's snores carry over in the quiet and not once does morrigan snipe at surana's presence or her unending questions. there is much a circle mage does not know, and to speak with a witch from the wilds, an apostate outside the chokehold of a paranoid religious cult?

little does surana know that this is the beginning of many more to come.

* * *

the dalish are every bit as snootish as surana's been told they are, but after a few conversations with some of them, surana understands. she understands enough to question the lies planted deep in her psyche.

she grew up on stories of dalish savagery, on templars saving dalish mages abandoned in the woods for the crime of being a spare mage too many. stories that paint the chantry as saviours vis-a-vis the cruelty of heathens.

now, she believes this: evil doesn't just dwell in the dark corners of a wooded path, or the undulating landscape of the fade.

evil is the power wielded to keep 'order'. evil is the system that decides for you on the guise of protection. evil is the illusion of equality when one's life hangs on the goodwill of another.

and that is why zathrian dies, surana's words the hand that twists the knife of his guilt in his gut. surana isn't sorry for his death. surana's sorry that his curse still _won't_ stop _shems_ from committing the same evil again and again and again against their kind.

for the first time, surana wonders if there's more she can do as an elvhen, warden mage besides dealing with the blight.

* * *

alistair warned surana about the nightmares, that first week after her joining. but the nightmares still leave her soaking wet upon waking, a cry ripped from her throat.

weeks after, she begins taking more sentry shifts, and alistair simply nods. makes space for her around the fire, passes along a hunk of bread leftover from dinner.

his smile doesn't quite reach his ears.

* * *

they say mages can leave the circle, but the circle doesn't leave a mage.

surana believes they're all liars. home needs to be safe. home needs to be comfortable. the ferelden circle is _none_ of that.

when surana says she'd rather see the circle burn, she means it. she chortles as wynne turns her staff on her. she would permit demons to terrorise its halls; necessitating the right of annulment that greagoir obviously preferred out of convenience. to cleanse the filth the _shems_ call a circle and erase it from living memory. anything to see the circle cleansed from living memory... but mages can still be saved.

surana isn't abomination enough to abandon her kind, even if she considers herself a libertarian; a fraternity supposedly responsible for this catastrophe. so she sweeps through the tower with nary a grumble, not even when sloth sends them into a maze-like hellscape that leaves surana casting fireballs when flames would've sufficed. so much she's learnt as a warden, so much that she understands why the chantry sought to hamstring her. hamstring _mages_ , broadly speaking. she channels that rage and resentment into her spells, and maybe that's why she easily swats fade spirits away like the pests they are.

(that is why wynne does not kill her.)

greagoir's expression when surana returns with irving at her shoulder fills her with immeasurable glee.

* * *

surana doesn't understand why alistair kicks a fuss the moment she _contemplates_ inviting zevran into their merry band. either she's just partial towards her own kind, or the former templar isn't used to a world of shifting allegiances; gray, gray, and never fixed in black nor white. the naive ones rarely are.

secretly, surana yearns for that kind of safety. for a world where blades don't exist in the dark, where the threat of tranquility doesn't hang over them the moment they breathe. where words are just words that don't imply anything more.

she wishes for much, but how much can she receive?

* * *

she is caustic words and unbridled contempt but surana falls for her anyway.

surana _sees_ her the moment morrigan blanches at the first hint of kindness lavished on her; the moment the witch masks it with a searing backhand of a retort.

"i am perfectly capable of helping myself up, surana," morrigan spits, but surana notes the use of her name, not her title, like how alistair is just a templar to morrigan - if morrigan isn't calling him a fool. no matter that morrigan still totters on her feet from the pride demon's stinging spirit whip, no matter that she still hisses under her breath from the pain. wynne's offers of healing are turned down with a glare, too.

surana sees the steadfast clinging to independence, sees the insistence for emotional distance and the suppression of everything but disdain and anger and surana wonders how deep the differences go before she'll find herself staring at another reflection of herself.

surana doesn't realise it yet, but maybe that's why she finds comfort where her companions find censure.

maybe that's why morrigan bites her tongue when surana visits her fire later, offers her soup and company and maybe an offer to heal. allows surana to rest her palms on her shoulders as she summons healing energy with flickering radiance. her hands, unpractised in the school of restoration, so they fumble and they falter, but surana tries anyway.

morrigan does not slap her hands away.

* * *

jowan is the epitome of naivety and weakness surana abhors, but she unlocks his prison door instead of boiling his blood there and then.

morrigan's the only one who agrees with her (surana's strangely relieved) and surana explains to the rest that jowan's still useful - either as a body or a brain. it's a half-truth they grudgingly accept, seeing how _blood mage_ has already poisoned anything he has or has yet to do till the day he dies.

she doesn't realise till later on, that it's because she's a stray herself; an outcast leading her flock.

redcliffe is saved as surana storms through the fade - _again_ \- with the fury of a slighted race, and of grudges long harboured. the circle teaches never to deal with demons, but surana wrangles arcane secrets from desire before banishing her with a thinly-veiled threat of destruction.

surana's good at that, the intimidation. all she needs is a glint of steel in her tone and the shimmer of spirit energy in her fists, and she'll see fear bloom in their eyes. she enjoys it, the power; born out of necessity and survival. this is how she's survived in a world that prefers her kind strung up or corralled in alienages like cattle.

but she returns to with connor saved but eamon unresponsive, and she wonders if she should've battled desire as consolation.

* * *

it takes more out of her to navigate lies, to tolerate the offhand comments that minimise the trauma inflicted by the circle. it takes, takes, and takes, and it isn't long before her patience's shorn to the fine width of a razor's edge.

like any good circle mage, she keeps it in. hoards it like a high dragon with treasure, and lets it fester like the blight in a body that never underwent the joining. it's the spark that fuels her fire.

she should dye her hair red. crimson. personify the firebrand she is to the _shems_ she meets. but gray is gray and she does not want more attention to herself, not when invisibility is what gives her kind power. not-quite, not-like what the _shems_ wield, but power enough to resist. to disrupt.

there is hope for a better future that she wishes not to jeopardise with ill-advised cosmetic choices.

* * *

surana talks to morrigan because the woman is a mage untainted by a circle; an ideal surana has long craved. surana doesn't say it, ever, but behind the frown lies admiration. admiration that expresses as respect; in an opinion sought and an opinion favoured, in words uttered but not wielded as a weapon.

surana doesn't notice it at first, until zevran nudges her one night with a gleam in his eyes.

"you are fond of her," he whispers, conspiratorial.

unlike her response to accusations from her _shem_ companions, surana doesn't bite back.

she just sighs, somber. "i know."

morrigan's warning to her hasn't fallen on deaf ears, as much as surana acts otherwise. surana won't lie - there's a real chance they won't survive this blight alive. so she adds, as a breath, "even if it kills me." even if it turns out the way morrigan warns her it will.

perhaps that's why the antivan doesn't needle surana with another vaguely sexual quip. perhaps that's why he shadows her as shadows do; silent, and constant. his knives pointed at anyone who harbours ill-intent towards her. has always, but now, more zealously.

surana cannot love him like a lover, so she loves him like a friend.

* * *

the circle teaches never to deal with demons, but surana listens. she always listens to offers whispered from the fade.

part of her yearns to test her mettle against temptations of the fade; in some sick test to prove to herself that she's better than the chantry's perception of her kind. as mages, _and_ elvhen. yet, untested constraint is as good as lacking it, and she throws herself into chaos despite the disapproval of her chantry-believing _shem_ companions.

of course, all they see her as is a potential abomination. what else can she expect of them?

no, what would the chantry know of such things, fearful fools they are? fearing even history itself to purge and change canticles from their beloved chant of light?

obviously, she tricks the demon inhabiting sophia dryden's corpse. a few strong words, a few honeyed promises, and the demon is snared - as _if_ surana would let a demon wander free beyond the fade. wynne's and alistair's warnings don't grate on her nerves today, because it helps to sell the lie.

the demon's face as surana's palms crackle with electricity contorts with rage, but the light illuminates the _fear_ swimming beneath.

surana doesn't presume to deny the thrill running down her spine, in seeing _shemlen_ completely at her mercy; even if the _shem_ is but a husk of a human.

a pulse of energy, and dryden's corpse jerks away amidst scattered smoke to land on the floor. dead. so is the history pressed into her memories, one the demon had promised. but they don't deal with demons.

if that's the price of research into blighted blood, so be it.

* * *

she is caustic words and unbridled contempt and surana unsurprisingly falls for her.

she tells herself it's because of morrigan's stunning beauty; supple limbs and lithe muscles and swirling _power_ dancing underneath pale skin - it's intoxicating. not a moment passes where surana fantasises about the feel of such fingers wrapped around her throat, or tracing circles into her skin; every touch a jolt of electricity or the brand of a burn she doesn't want to heal.

then, not a day out from orzammar, morrigan slides a finger along surana's elbow and whispers in her ear. her breath, hotter than the heat of her campfire, does wonders to surana's body.

normally, there's no fire. there's no ache for anyone else to the point of paralysis and the conviction settles in that she is... _broken_ , somehow - but she knows better now.

they're not morrigan. they're not the witch of caustic words and unbridled contempt; those emotions masking an entire person beneath. the little laugh she makes, the way her amber eyes glow in the morning sun, the fierce protectiveness that she vehemently denies. morrigan is no less flawed than anyone else, but surana wants her precisely because of who she is.

"'tis cold, all alone in my tent."

seven words. a history together. that's all it takes for surana to _seize_ the hand skittering touches along her arm with the grace of a cat.

"then why are we wasting time out here?"

morrigan's eyes flash; surprised. then, her lips curl into a smirk.

they barely remember to put up silencing wards around their tent.

* * *

surana doesn't remember life before the circle, before imprisonment, before living death. but while the mind forgets, the body remembers, like how her feet catch on rocky ground and her ears twitch from the lyrium in the air and she knows, _knows_ this place is not where elvhen are meant to tread.

no, not even for the people of the stone. not when her blighted blood burns in her veins, every breath a struggle to force the nausea down.

it is fitting, then, when all they find are legionnaires and darkspawn. _broodmother_. creatures damned and presence scorned. it is somewhere branka will rest eternal.

caridin swings his hammer, sends her plunging into the deep. she returns, to stone.

the deep roads is a blighted place. surana wants nothing more than for elgar'nan to crush it beyond memory.

creators, not even mythal's grace can redeem this place.

* * *

a mirror is placed in morrigan's hands, her face betraying wonderment. there are no words, not even her usual of fine gifts and thanks. because this is an item given _just because_.

she does not understand. neither does surana. this is not how the elf imagined the encounter to be.

surana expects the worst. "you despise it."

no, morrigan does not. morrigan cannot put words to feelings she does not expect, let alone recognise.

_love? there is no love. only strength and power and-_

morrigan does what she does when she doesn't. for people, she pushes away. for items--

"i cannot accept this."

at least for sex, morrigan can say it's meaningless. it means nothing more than the mutual need to scratch an itch. in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

this...

this complicates.

 _complicates the feelings that surface when she looks at the elf, the curve of her jaw, the fullness of her lips, the twitch of sinew under skin_. of her, her, her.

rare gain her respect, and rarer so, her admiration.

surana is already reaching for the mirror, eyes averted. her frame is rigid. her aura... frigid.

morrigan stills her hand. tilts her head with a grip of surana's chin. doesn't loosen her grip till cat-like irises of gray lock onto amber. hers.

they're alone in a room that bhelen gifted them. hours after emerging from the thaigs, scarred and filthy and violated by the horrors lurking beneath. surana stopped by to ensure her companions were comfortable, and morrigan, morrigan was her last stop.

they're exhausted. but more importantly, they're alive. thudding hearts, blood racing in their ears.

morrigan leans in, lips to earlobe, breath feverish. "i know of a better gift."

surana shivers. stone is cold, the deep roads colder still, but it isn't the chill that wracks her body.

the mirror clinks to the floor, forgotten, as surana gasps from tongue on the tip of her ear.

_all this_

_means nothing._

there is only power.

* * *

morrigan keeps the mirror. surana insists, and she doesn't have the heart to refuse.

* * *

surana feels the heaviness in the air, the weighing on her bones. the beginning of the end.

it announces its presence in redcliffe. after the meetings, after the revelations. alistair is to vie for the throne - _his feelings are inconsequential_ \- and eamon's coalition is to march upon denerim and the teryn's farcical rule over ferelden.

so are the armies of the treaties. their efforts manifest as the horde that will hold denerim at all costs. the archdemon must go.

they will set off the day after 'morrow, ahead of the armies. to scout. to map what's to meet them, and see first-hand if their efforts have meant something.

but something catches her attention as they ride. an errant prank of zevran, messing around with alistair - the biggest fool amongst them, surana contends - and she hears giggles amongst her party. laughter. mirth. it's that that makes her turn over her shoulder, even as they ride uninterrupted.

surana doesn't see her party. she sees hope. _without_ an old god's shadow over thedas.

morrigan is smiling at her, she realises. morrigan is someone she's been gazing at for a while, she realises. lost in thought, mulling over better tomorrows.

circle mages do not think about such lives. circle mages learn, early on, not to.

surana has never been a good circle mage.

* * *

she is caustic words and unbridled contempt and this time, it hurts like a silence.

surana doesn't understand how words can burn hotter than a templar's enchanted blade. it's not supposed to. it's not how the bards said they'd go. it's not how _she_ sees herself reacting.

"this closeness is a weakness for us both. i am not worth your distraction, and you... are not worth mine."

surana has survived thus far on a pittance of emotional support. anyone in the circle would have. she's weaponised her fear into unyielding spite; like a roaring pyre that never gutters out.

yet, morrigan's rejection sends her fleeing to a deserted grove, where surana sits on the bank of a creek with her toes dipped in water. magelight and wards protect her from animals straying into her path, and surana finally lets herself drift away, eyes fixed on the flowing water. hoping that time and inattention can numb her to the pain of heartbreak. she thinks there should be tears, feelings made manifest.

there is nothing.

to surana's surprise, leliana joins her sometime after. she doesn't hear the bard until the woman slips off her boots, leather sliding against skin, before she mimics surana in letting the water of the creek swirl around her feet.

"i heard your conversation," leliana starts, tentative. surana supposes her expression is stormier than a slate wiped clean; otherwise, the bard would have held her tongue. at least, that was how leliana behaved around her.

surana wishes she'd raised anti-shem wards too. "here to say 'i told you so'?"

"no!" leliana rejects, her voice spiking. "no. i simply wished to tell you that I am here, if you need me. i know you care for her, regardless of whether she does. watching you and her, i thought..."

"there's nothing worth talking about. it is inconsequential."

"surely? if you truly believe that, i'm certain brooding is the last of your-"

"she doesn't care." surana watches her reflection in the water; watches the unnatural stillness of her frame, the nonexistent quiver of her jaw. of emotions seething beneath, but never bleeding into her outward mannerisms. "she had her fun, and now she's cutting me off. i should've known this about her. i _should've_ -"

expected this. it's _not_ wholly unexpected. surana realises this with liquid rage in her veins and fear in her heart, and that's _it._ morrigan is fury on the outside and fear on the inside. morrigan is self-imposed distance while her heart yearns for a connection that's been beaten out of her.

"surana? is everything alright?"

"i need to speak to her." surana doesn't hesitate. she stands and leaves, a confused leliana in her wake.

but confusion gives way to a small smile once it sinks in for the bard. content, leliana hums a ballad of lovers separated, but not split, until the chill leaves her bones aching.

leliana hums, soon after, a ballad of love, unrequited.

* * *

surana confronts her. confronts, because to say converse is to pretend they don't turn to sharp words and hostile glares on the cusp of screaming at each other. truly, what are they to each other?

they meet at her tent, someways off their common campfire, but it's dead quiet when they're standing an arm's length apart.

morrigan doesn't speak. oh, she does with words, but surana doesn't hear her. doesn't hear the witch in those words, only a collection of sounds. bereft of feeling, drained of meaning. what are words without voice? morrigan still hides that part of her, the soul that yearns for connection and intimacy and - _love_ , and surana needs six words before that vice-grip of morrigan loosens and her emotions gush out in a wave.

"i don't want this to end."

it is enough. enough that morrigan damns her, slaps her with a cry of frustration.

no - it does not sting. surana catches her hand partways, digs fingers into her skin the moment morrigan wounds her with her forked tongue, words as jagged as broken glass.

"you miserable, selfish bitch!"

(not knife-ear. not knife-ear. only _bitch._ not knife-ear.)

she does not mean it. morrigan. surana can tell. knows it like the words resting in the hollow of her throat, _please let me in_. it's something she would've said herself, too.

she does not mean it. surana knows it by the way morrigan wilts, slackens when surana reaches for her cheek. her hand falls away, gaze dipping too. in those amber eyes, there is sorrow.

the witch need not mention it, because surana already hears it ringing in her ears. when morrigan does, surana finds herself mouthing those four words; thoughts slamming against the walls of her mind.

"for better, or worse."

on morrigan's lips is damnation and desire in equal measure, and surana hungers for it all.

truly, they are something to each other.

* * *

they are... happy, together.

their love is a bonfire, raging and sparking, but it is not an inferno. it does not consume - not anymore. not after opening their hearts and letting the feelings between them breathe. like how flames mellow in open air, all they'd needed was--

catharsis. taking apart the walls between them, brick by brick, with little gestures and careful words.

morrigan smiles more around her. less haughty, more... soft, if she can speak that of the abrasive witch.

surana does not consider wynne a friend, not even if they once shared the same tower. she does _not_ need a _shem's_ approval - fen'harel take her before she does. still, previous censure has melted into ambivalence, and for that, she breathes easy.

 _shem_ cannot be trusted, but wynne is one less person she need watch out for.

* * *

amell doesn't impress surana, being of noble and human blood for starters. but when she barges in to the landsmeet on the heels of another woman, surana wants nothing more than to guffaw like a knife-ear in the presence of _shem_ nobility.

surana notes how amell's expression lights the moment they meet gazes across a crowded hall, and she knows, _knows_ , that miracles do happen; that amell is someone she should've trusted the moment she met her.

amell's companion instigates a furore so great at a _ferelden_ event that surana lets herself drift away into inattention, her shoulders relaxing. The wrath of the last surviving cousland is searing, and the teryn's rock-solid claim to leadership is all but shattered.

loghain challenges surana to a duel. he laughs, like his supporters, when she declines to name alistair or cousland as her champion, unsheathing her staff one-handed in open challenge.

his smile freezes when surana summons a glimmering sword in her other.

surana grins.

after the teryn falls, the shame of being felled by a mage pierces deeper than the blade of treason. what better way to stoke the fire than to invoke the right of conscription? it's a shrewd move; to curry favor with anora, recruit another warden, and retain a general's mind. with the resultant uproar, surana knows she won't be able to live this down.

but alistair... she should've known. he respects her leaderships still, but is unable to push aside feelings for the sake of duty. loghain _razed_ alienages, _sold_ elvhenan to tevinter slavers - and yes, deserted cailan's forces at ostagar. of course she knows the man she's conscripting. elgar'nan, she is _this_ close to slitting the teryn's throat. but she doesn't. there is merit to his continued existence, and she will seize it.

she loses a friend but retains the solid partnership of a theirin-mac tir claim to the throne; a sacrifice she'll bear without stopping a beat.

* * *

surana feels the heaviness in the air, the weighing on her bones. the beginning of the end.

it announced its presence in redcliffe. and now, it speaks of revelation.

it takes the form of the warden they rescued. riordan. the orlesian in the dungeons. arl howe hides his skeletons in metal-barred closets, and surana is gleeful their sacking of it added to the pyre that was the landsmeet.

they rescued him expecting an extra sword-arm against urthemiel, only for him to reveal a secret - a _shame_ \- that feels like catching a templar shield in the face.

but orlesians are known for masquerades, not bitter truths. "to kill the archdemon, one of us will die."

four wardens at the table, one of them privy to such secrets. three uninitiated to warden lore, one completing the joining just shy of a day ago.

alistair crumbles first. surana stiffens, loghain sighs. and mac tir volunteers himself to absorb the old god, should riordan fall.

(surana knows riordan will. she knows there are no happy endings for souls as damned as them. someone will fall.)

past the anger, surana feels. despair. grief. a palpable sense of loss, the way her eyes can't focus and her throat seemingly choked-up with dwarven stone.

they are so close.

 _she_ is so close to a life she can only dream of in the fade.

an archdemon stands between her and that.

* * *

fool.

it isn't just the archdemon.

it's her heart, too. _ma vhenan._

standing at the fireplace of the room they share in eamon's estate, the night before the hordes will take them at denerim. her back towards surana, all sculpted muscle and ivory skin gleaming in the firelight.

this is not how it's supposed to be. this is not how it's meant to be. _this is how she was warned it'd be_.

"ana."

"morrigan." how many more times will surana hear her name from those lips, a voice lacking its usual venom - carrying _warmth_ \- when directed at her? "you were hard to find."

"i merely remained where you did not search." still, she does not turn. still, she wraps her hands around herself, bony fingers digging into skin.

morrigan is nervous, and that terrifies surana more than when morrigan is frigid, freezing fury. and surana is right.

morrigan tells her about a ritual to save her soul. save _their_ souls. but even surana, blood mage and forbidden magic extraordinaire, knows that some magic is too old, too taboo, too powerful to be touched. it is not fear of the unknown. it is the fear of arrogance, the fear of unleashing forces beyond their control. all mages know the price of magic. all mages know the folly of the the tevinter magisters who stormed the black city in arrogance, and the maker cast them from the heavens. all mages who lived and died on the chantry's _whim_. even this, surana cannot shake off.

surana says yes. despite all rational sense, surana says yes. sentiment and fear and longing and sadness clenches her heart and she reaches to lift morrigan's chin and guide her lips to hers. tenderly. delicately. as if they have no tomorrow to live for.

(as far as surana's concerned, morrigan leaving regardless is as good as that)

tonight, there is only them, and their feelings for each other. not even the blight, nor the maker himself, can take that away from them.

in the morning, they do not speak. they dare not speak. morrigan helps surana into her armour, surana helps morrigan into her robes and ties her hair. all that, in silence. whatever has passed will remain unsaid. whatever will be, will be.

at least this way, surana's heart can shatter only on the inside, without her jagged shards hurtling outwards to hurt everyone else.

ferelden needs her.

* * *

surana feels the heaviness in the air, the weighing on her bones. the beginning of the end.

it is the end.

riordan is dead. zevran is unconscious. half her party bleeds and bruises from grievous wounds left and right, and even with amell and cousland and the surprise help of the red jennies led by some alienage elf called tabris, it is the end.

they may have ascended to the highest point of denerim, cutting a swathe through darkspawn, the horde is endless. urthemiel blots out the moon simply from unfurling his wings. arrows nor spells nor blades are enough; his scales are ripped from wound after wound, but it is not enough.

surana watches as her companions fall.

loghain. sten. wynne. leliana. cousland. amell.

surana watches as urthemiel pauses, pulls his head back, _inhales_ -

she runs. runs to urthemiel. drops her staff in her left, uses her right to swipe for the shortsword in zevran's limp fingers. clutches the grip with both hands the way sten taught her. her, a _bas saarebas_.

(someone screams at her to stop, stop, stop, _ana, stop_ -)

urthemiel catches sight of her as her palms crackle with energy. when urthemiel snaps at where she was a blink ago, she leaps.

she plunges zevran's sword down into urthemiel's skull, jaw, stone... just like alistair once, for the ogre that once terrorised them at the topmost level of ishal.

it is the end.

the looming dark claims her as quickly and painlessly as she'd dreamed.

and it is not.

surana wakes to find morrigan hovering over her. mortified is not how she would ever speak of the witch, the witch of the wilds carrying untold secrets behind a coy smirk, but that is how she is - a crack in her facade, terror plain.

morrigan is not crying, but she does not have to.

"i'm alive," surana smiles, weak. somehow, she finds the strength to reach for morrigan, to curl her fingers around the sharp angles of her jaw... and not let go.

only then, does morrigan release a sob.

* * *

she is caustic words and unbridled contempt and this time, she really leaves. they always do. everyone does.

this time, it hurts more because surana's aware of this inevitability.

she remembers drifting to sleep curled up beside morrigan, only to wake on an empty bed and the scent of deathroot clinging to the sheets. she had been warned. morrigan manipulates, misdirects - but she is not a liar.

there's a ring, surana finds later. wrapped in velvet and hidden between the folds of her spare robes. sometimes it tingles, uncanny warmth emanating from the twisted braidwood, so surana wears it on cord around her neck. on her chest. close to her heart.

it's an explanation. a final goodbye, for someone who fumbles over words used not to wound.

surana smiles instead, twisting the ring between her knuckles. a simple action to occupy her hands, lead her attention away from the aching absence in her chest.

this is her way home.

* * *

years later, the warden-commander of ferelden disappears.

without a note, without warning.

but to those closest to her, the chantry sister and the king of ferelden and the antivan crow...

they know, and it is enough.


End file.
